


Olphaeon Hive, Cantus

by JackMules



Category: Dark Heresy (Roleplaying Game), Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Action, Calixis sector, Gen, Inquisition, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 14:56:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20508896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackMules/pseuds/JackMules
Summary: Two Inquisitorial agents pursue two heretics onto a ferry boat travelling over an underhive lake.





	Olphaeon Hive, Cantus

**Author's Note:**

> A story written earlier than my previous post.

The port of Dimlicht stood on a lonely promontory extending into lake of murky effluent and slime. Its feeble electric torches were the last light before the deep black of the Feucht. The Feucht was a lake that stood inside an enormous chamber, more than twelve miles across, beneath Hive Olphaon on Cantus. Toxic pollutants had collected beneath the hive’s manufacturing districts over the course of several hundred years, creating a deadly dangerous soup of unknown and unstable substances that could at any moment belch forth a bubble of toxic gas, choking a settlement or sinking a ship in moments. The upper layers of the lake were the least dangerous, being water and oils, but in places these layers were less than two metres thick. Any unfortunate soul that fell in and through into the subsurface layers would seldom live long enough to be rescued. The clouds of fumes that hung motionless over the lake dimmed the passing light to the extent that, if standing on the shore, a visitor from a more terran world might think it were a becalmed ocean stretching endlessly toward a starless night sky.  
Although dangerous and unpredictable, passage across the lake remained an important route through the Olphaon underhive. It was faster by far than going around the lake, which also had its own risks. Ruthless gangs controlled all of the territory and would extract eye-watering tolls on merchants, or rob them blind. Going up through the mid-hive gate and across the manufacturing sector was an option only for those who held the proper identification. Thus, ships across the Feucht still ran, despite the risks.  
Iacaton sat crouched down with a thick cloak drawn around him to hide the light of his psy-scanner, leaning against a rickety flakboard shack. Iacaton had been studying the display intently since they arrived in the port. He rubbed his eyes and brushed away a lock of hair. His hair was, especially considering his profession, outrageous. It was a shocking fluorescent orange and long enough to come halfway down his face.  
A few paces away, Conn was watching the approach to the ferry from behind a low wall. He too wore the local garb, a hooded cloak thick enough to withstand an errant splash of corrosive effluent for a few seconds until you could throw it off, but his significantly taller and more muscled body was too big to completely swathe in the standard size cloaks they had stolen. It did, at least, conceal the unnatural-looking angular bulges caused by his subdermal armour plates and the flak armour he was wearing.  
By contrast, the cloak was far too big for Iacaton. Conn had earlier remarked, with his wry half-smile, that if Iacaton lay down, he might pass of a pile of rags. Iacaton hadn’t disagreed.  
Both of them were hivers and although they were from different worlds of the Calixis sector, they were not so physically different when they first met, more than fifteen years ago. Those born and raised in hive-cities were naturally a little smaller than citizens of other classes of Imperial world, simply because of the human capacity for adaptation over generations spent in a consistent environment. Since they had met, however, their years of service to the Emperor had changed them both. Conn had lost his legs and had been issued with exquisite bionic replacements. He was now one-point-nine metres tall, twenty centimetres taller than he had been previously, with the ability to extend his legs another twenty centimetres further on command.  
Iacaton’s most grievous lasting injury was not so easily overcome. Early in his career, he had been caught in a wave of psychic backwash during a firefight that had ravaged his body. He had always been wiry and lean, but while recuperating from the incident he began to lose body mass rapidly. The only thing that stopped the wasting was intense training and conditioning, as well as an increased diet. In time he had regained strength, but the weight he had lost never returned.  
He managed to draw out some advantages from his condition. He was short even by the standards of hive-worlders and now his scrawniness meant that he could pass for someone in their mid-teens. So, using the extensive resources available to him, he had begun rejuvenation treatment at the age of thirty eight. Two years later, he was as fresh-faced as a pampered noble scion and looked no older than eighteen.  
Conn spoke for the first time in hours, in his low, gravelly Fenksworld burr. “It’s almost time.”  
Iacaton rose, stamped out his lho-stick and pushed his filter plugs back into his nostrils. Removing them for the sake of a smoke had been an unfortunate necessity, as the lho-smoke would have clogged the filters and rendered them useless. It had been a decision he had wrestled with for half an hour, but ultimately, he really needed a smoke. He had regretted it as soon as he took his first unfiltered breath. The toxic fumes drifting off Feucht lake had almost sent him into a coughing fit, but he had made his decision. The journey to get here had been onerous and if they found their quarry here, he would need his edge.  
The locals didn’t wear filters. Iacaton had noted a certain pride among the shiphands of the Feucht at being able to breathe and work hard in the toxic air without apparently feeling its effects. Along with being able to spot the early signs of a gas burst or a subsurface reaction, it was a mark of experience. Shipping was lucrative business for the gangs who controlled the ports and ships. Each crew was heavily-armed. They had seen at least a dozen shiphands on board, all carrying weapons and wearing armour consisting of cobbled together from pieces of scrap along with the odd piece of manufactured flak armour.  
The shallow-draughted ferry docked at Dimlicht was preparing to leave. Travellers were already sitting on its cold decks and the last vehicles were maneuvering into place. The ferry resembled a section of rectangular metal tubing, with vehicles parked in the central section and passengers sheltered between stacks of crates on the mostly-open top deck.  
Iacaton and Conn emerged from the darkness between the port buildings and walked up to the passenger gantry. Conn pressed a token into the hand of a shiphand as they crossed the gantry in silence, the last travellers to board. 

****************

Jolor watched the lights of Dimlicht retreat steadily away as the ferry moved quietly away from the port. He and his companion Fye were hunkered down in a dark corner of the vessel, huddled for warmth and hiding as well as they could. He could feel her shivering.  
“This is our best hope,” he ventured, “it’s the fastest route to the exo-gate. If we lose them we have a clean run, but if they come for us here, then we have a plan.”  
“I know,” she murmured. “The waiting just gets to me.”  
There was nothing to say. She knew the plan.  
Jolor knew the plan would most likely fail, but he pretended quiet confidence to calm her nerves. Their pursuers had been relentless and unerring in their three month chase through the Olphaon underhive, but despite several opportunities had not killed them. Their goal was clear. As the last survivors of the cult of Klaus Mandamar, Jolor knew that capture was their goal.  
He would rather die.  
Fye seemed to be working herself up to a question. She cleared her throat. “How is it that you’re so calm, Jolor? I don’t know how you stay relaxed. I see now why the Father chose you as his heir.”  
Jolor spoke levelly. “I know that we have a plan. That is enough.”  
Underneath her cloak, she was gripping a charm tightly in her left hand. “The waiting is driving me mad. Not knowing how close they are, whether we’ve lost them, or whether they’re around the next corner. They don’t ever stop, do they?”  
“They will today.”  
A man in overalls and an armoured jacket carrying a work bag approached them. Sijk, the gang boss they had hired to ambush their pursuers, knelt down next to them. His bag clunked as it touched the deck plating. “Good news for you, stranger. My boys say that two off-worlders boarded just before the ship set off.”  
Jolor sat up excitedly.  
“Are your men observing them now?” He asked, breathlessly.  
“Yeah-”  
“Kill them now, you fool!” Jolor grabbed the man’s collar and stared, mad-eyed, into his face.  
Sijk shrugged him off, shaking his head. “I told you how this was going to work, stranger. We wait until we’re out of sight of land, then we take the ship one hand at a time. Quiet. Calm. No problems.” He lifted a lasgun out of the bag and checked the charge level.  
Jolor didn’t break eye contact. “Listen to me carefully. Unless your men are shadesmen cloaked in the night itself, they will have been noticed. With every heartbeat that you delay it grows more likely that your plan will fail and that none of us leave this ship alive. Do as I say, now.”  
Sijk looked at Jolor and raised an eyebrow.  
“No, you listen to me, stranger. You did your part smuggling our guns on board, but now we’re on this ship, I’ve got only one thing on my mind - stealing it. Your little hit is just a bonus. If you keep your head down and stay out of my way, then your job will get done. Believe me, no-one’s walking off this ship apart from me, my guys and you. That is, if you stow that attitude and shut your hole. We clear?” He tapped Jolor’s temple with his left hand, with a patronising smile.  
Jolor remained staring into the man’s eyes and took a long, shuddering breath. As he reached up to the man’s temple with his left hand to return the gesture his face twisted into a mad rictus. He hissed through gritted teeth.  
“Clear?”  
At the moment his fingertip came into contact with the man’s skin, Jolor controlled him. Every synapse, every sinew. At Jolor’s irresistible mental urging, the man reached to the vox unit under his jacket and brought the microphone to his mouth.  
“Forget the plan. Kill the off-worlders first. Kill them now.”  
A moment passed, then a fuzzy reply sounded.  
“We hear you Sijk, we’ll need to reposition before we have a good angle-”  
“Did I ask you to dzuking talk the dzuk back to me or did I ask you to kill those dzukers, now!?”  
“...Aye.”  
Jolor made Sijk kill the vox link. Then he leaned right in to Sijk’s face. Jolor’s eyes narrowed as he concentrated on each of Sijk’s muscles, locking each one into an intense spasm. Unable to scream, Sijk’s gasping breaths intensified until Jolor concentrated on his diaphragm, after which, Sijk was completely silent. Jolor breathed into his ear.  
“It looks like you’ll be leaving the ship alive, after all.”  
Jolor reached down and grabbed Sijk’s legs around the knees, then pitched him over the side. Sijk fell beneath the waters without a sound, his muscles still locked rigid. He didn’t surface.  
Jolor took a breath and turned back to Fye. She was wide-eyed, with a smile spreading across her face.  
“You truly are the Father’s heir!”

*******************

The crossing was quiet. The ship’s impellers worked gently to avoid churning up dangerous chemicals. The passengers stayed huddled in small groups, minding their cargo.  
Iacaton and Conn leaned against a stack of crates, observing the rest of the deck with convincing nonchalance. While seeming silent and contemplative, they were deep in conversation using a verbal cipher articulated through clicking noises made with the tongue and the teeth, picked up by bone conduction via the vox units implanted in their skulls.  
Iacaton smiled and winked as he met the eyes of one man who was obviously observing them.  
“Three watching from my side. One with a vox unit.”  
“Two to our rear behind the crate. Lasguns. Communicating with your group. Hand signals.” Conn had somehow concealed his shotgun invisibly under his cloak, but Iacaton knew that once he moved, it would be obvious.  
Iacaton ran through the possibilities in his head, but there was only one likely scenario. These were local toughs hired by their targets in a desperate attempt to ambush them. Lasguns were common enough on this planet and favoured in the underhive for their reliability.  
“First group has pistols only. Primitive armour.”  
“Amateurs, but still could be messy.”  
The psy-scanner in Iacaton’s hand, concealed in the folds of his cloak, began to vibrate.  
“Activity.” He glanced down at its arcane display to see graphs spiking and gauges at maximum.  
“Throne.” He breathed. “Iota-level event.”  
They both tensed, ready for anything.  
After a moment, Conn clicked a reply. “No visual.”  
“No visual.”  
“The target isn’t rated Iota.”  
“Affirmative. At least, he wasn’t. ” Iacaton glanced down again. “Signal lock. He’s in the forward section, lower deck.”  
In his peripheral vision, Iacaton saw the vox operator tense and look over towards them, then slip around a corner, talking on his vox unit.  
“Heads up. Vox operator communicating.”  
One of the other gangers looked up at the vox operator sharply.  
“They are getting orders.”  
“Let’s go first.”  
Conn leapt to his feet and slammed his shoulder the stack of crates behind him, toppling them onto the gangers behind them with an almighty crash, then vanished from sight behind another stack. Iacaton dived forward over a crate and rolled into cover behind a raised access hatch. Firearms roared and shots punched through the crates where they had stood, spraying slivers of metal and shredded cargo all over the deck. Iacaton drew his Thollos autopistol from the holster on his right thigh and returned fire back at the group of three gangers in order to give Conn a moment to reposition.  
The two gangers knocked over by Conn’s shoved crates regained their feet. Just as they raised their weapons, two booming shots rang out from Conn’s shotgun and they fell, blood spraying from grievous wounds. Conn was moving swiftly through cover to flank the main group, drawing fire. Iacaton, crouching low, darted to an adjacent row of crates and moved unseen towards them in a pincer movement. He clipped his psy-scanner to his belt and drew his Thollos autopistol in his left hand.  
Amid the din of shouting and screaming from other passengers he heard two other people approaching from the opposite direction. Two deckhands were pointing pistols in his direction and shouting. Iacaton shouted back, keeping his weapon lowered.  
“Get to cover!”  
They continued shouting. “Drop your weapon!” “On the ground! Now!”  
One of the three attackers stepped out of cover and hosed them with automatic fire. One of the men was hit several times and pitched forward onto the deck. The other dived sideways into a pile of food containers. Iacaton capitalised on the distraction, lunging out of cover and killing two of the gangers with akimbo bursts from his autopistols.  
The last attacker panicked and tried to retreat toward the stern of the ship, but was felled by another blast from Conn.  
As the immediate area fell back into silence, Iacaton became aware of the sound of weapons fire elsewhere on the ship. The crew were defending the bridge against multiple attackers, and the sound of screaming and killing echoed up from the transport deck.  
The deckhand, eyes streaming with tears and face set in a shocked grimace, struggled to his feet and began to march toward Iacaton.  
Iacaton shouted frantically. “Get out of the open!”  
Before he could finish, there was a flash and the sound of a lasgun blast, and the man fell to his knees with a hole in his chest.  
Iacaton pressed himself further back into cover and clicked a message to Conn.  
“Bystanders down. Lasgun in starboard forward section.”  
“I saw the shot. Intercepting,” Conn replied.  
Iacaton holstered his pistols and began recalibrating his psy-scanner. “The target’s signal is fading. I have to move now.” Iacaton glanced around for hostile gangers. He heard a shotgun blast from further up the deck.  
“Lasgun down. This section clear.”  
Leading with his Thollos in his right hand and the scanner in his left, Iacaton sprang from his hiding place and ran towards the prow of the ship, his grubby brown cloak flying behind him. Muzzle flashes and gunshots came from his left. A ganger standing on top of the bridge cabin on the other side of the ship had seen him and was taking pot shots. Iacaton did a forward roll and slid on his knees across the bare metal deck, came up with his pistol sighted at the man’s chest and squeezed the trigger. He saw ricochets and penetrations spark off his makeshift armour as the man ducked behind cover. Iacaton didn’t wait until he came back out, he sprang back to his feet and carried on running, holstering his spent pistol. Without slowing he vaulted over the forward railing off the passenger deck and down, landing on the back of a transport truck. He jumped down the to the deck, landed in a crouch and checked his psy-scanner.  
“I’m close. Very-” He looked up to see a cloaked figure carrying a lasgun, standing at the railing at the prow of the ship.  
The man’s head snapped around. Purple fire ringed his eyes and his face was set with an expression halfway between terror and exaltation. Iacaton dropped and rolled underneath the truck just in time to dodge a flurry of las-fire that scorched the deck plating. He rolled through to the other side and drew his hand cannon in his right hand. The psy-scanner was pinging and vibrating. Iacaton stood and took one step out of cover, weapon raised. Into the psyker’s gunsights. They both fired simultaneously.  
The las-blast caught Iacaton in the side. The metal slug from his hand cannon impacted the psyker’s shoulder below the collarbone, sending a spurt of blood over the railing behind him and almost parting his head from his shoulders. The psyker collapsed to his knees. The purple light began to fade from around his eyes.  
A scream of rage came from behind Iacaton, followed by gunfire. The target’s accomplice was standing thirty metres down the deck firing wildly at Iacaton. From somewhere beyond there were two shots, then she fell silent and slumped to the deck.  
Iacaton groaned, leaning back heavily against the side of the truck. Waves of pain were coursing through him.  
“Aaaah, dzuk. Target down. I’m hit.” He dropped the heavy psy-scanner and fumbled under his cloak for his utility belt. He drew a stim-injector and stabbed it into his leg, gritting his teeth. He tried to stand again, but just as he began to stumble, Conn appeared at his shoulder and caught him.  
“Stop. Lean there. We’re not secure yet.” Conn reloaded his shotgun and scanned the deck behind them.  
“Damn it.” Iacaton cursed through gritted teeth. Their mission to capture at least one of the fleeing cultists alive had ended in failure. “Two months slinking around this forsaken pit and nothing to show for it.”  
There was a heavy splash. Both of them snapped their heads around to look where the psyker had been lying. He was gone, leaving only a wide pool of blood on the deck, with smears and bloody prints all over the railing.  
“No,” breathed Iacaton. “He can’t have, his head was hanging off…”  
Conn scowled. “Check the scanner.” He readied his rifle and cautiously approached the prow of the ship.  
Grunting with pain, Iacaton knelt and picked up the psi-scanner. He watched as a spike, detected at the time of the splash, edged across the graph until it left the screen, leaving a flat line. No more psychic activity. Conn returned, shaking his head.  
“He went under the ship. Blood streaks go down to the waterline. If he didn’t break through into the sub-layer, he’ll be dead from blood loss before he has a chance to drown.”  
Iacaton frowned. They both knew that psykers didn’t always obey the usual rules of human physiology, even when not part of a daemonic cult that they knew far too little about.  
Conn inspected Iacaton’s wound. “It’s not too bad. No bleeding. Your armour deflected most of the energy. Ready to move?”  
Iacaton began to nod, then saw people appearing at the railing, pointing weapons in their direction. Conn reached into his cloak slowly, took out a compact loudhailer and put it to his lips.  
“Inquisition! Drop your weapons!”

*****************

Iacaton sat in a small dell on the lakeside amid heaps of slag from some long-forgotten industry. In his hands was a small, armoured scroll case. Their next set of orders, to be opened after their targets were captured. He was turning it over and over.  
For three weeks, Iacaton and Conn had scoured the entire circumference of the lake, searching for the smallest sign of their quarry. They had found nothing, which left two possibilities. Either that Jolor had died in the lake or he had escaped without leaving any trace of his passage.  
They had run out of time. They could no longer pretend that they had not failed.  
Iacaton lifted the gene-locked catch.  
Inside was a single sheet of parchment, rolled up. The wax bore the seal of Inquisition. Iacaton broke it and unrolled the document. There was a short message written in immaculate lettering.

Iacaton,  
On the completion of your mission, bring the targets to my detention complex on Scintilla. 

I have advocated for you to be raised to the rank of Interrogator. I can now inform you with pleasure that Inquisitor Jasfur has endorsed my petition. The preparations for your viva voce will be made in time for your arrival. 

V. B.

Iacaton put his head in his hands for a moment. Then he stood.  
“Conn, we’re getting out of this dump.”  
“About time.”


End file.
